


Chasing Heroes

by acertainphilosophy



Category: Percy Jackson and the Olympians & Related Fandoms - All Media Types, Percy Jackson and the Olympians - Rick Riordan
Genre: Alternate Universe - Superheroes/Superpowers, I just really wanted a superhero AU with all the superhero stuff ok, M/M, Mutual Pining, Past Jason Grace/Piper McLean, Secret Identity, these kids deserve a little corniness and bright costumes
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-12-19
Updated: 2019-02-09
Packaged: 2019-09-23 02:19:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,107
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17071607
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/acertainphilosophy/pseuds/acertainphilosophy
Summary: Nico di Angelo has taken up the mantle as superhero liaison for New Rome City - his family has, for decades, delivered court rulings, bills, and fan mail to the superheroes of the city. It seems these days, what with a new flying Wonder Boy (with weird personal space issues and a penchant for being Too Invested), heroes are more trouble than they're worth.





	1. First Contact

Nico sprinted around a corner, grabbing onto a lamp post to maintain stability in the tight turn, and continued tearing down the busy city street. He ran into a man carrying a stack of papers, which promptly exploded from him like a confetti cannon. Nico dodged through the mess and hopped around him. He shouted some kind of apology into the wind, but his attention was locked on that dark blue _flash_ of a man in the sky above.

Wonder Boy haunted his every waking moment, and if he could just keep up a little longer, he could finally free himself of this burden. The blue figure, thankfully showing up boldly against the puffy white clouds, lowered a few stories so that he was barely above the apartment buildings.

This was good. If he was flying that low in a residential area, there was a good chance that he might be going to his own home base. And if Nico could get an address, he’d never have to worry about tracking this stupid super down to make deliveries ever again. That is, until the next one inevitably comes along. Which Nico wouldn’t mind so much, because maybe then his charge wouldn’t be able to _fly away_ , as this one had an increasingly annoying habit of doing.

Suddenly Wonder Boy was out of sight. He’d landed… where? Nico felt sick, from the thought of losing him after all the running, and also from all of the running. His bony legs were not made for this. Like an answered prayer, a blue cape appeared briefly from above the ledge of the building directly to his right. He found a shadowy crevice in the bricks at the opening of the alley, and went through directly to the building’s stairwell.

Wonder Boy was sitting on the edge of the roof, adjusting his masquerade mask, and remained so as Nico burst through the roof access door. Despite the noise, the hero didn’t move.

It was weird how serene he looked considering the situation. Did he not realize his mask was half off in front of a civvie? Whatever the reason for the behavior, Nico stomped forward to the edge of the roof, envelope in hand.

The superhero finally looked up and jumped about a mile when he turned to see Nico’s black clad, wraithlike presence marching toward him. Evidently he’d been expecting someone else.

“Who-What-H-How did you find me up here?” he sputtered, quickly pressing his mask down firmly to conceal his identity.

“It’s my job to find you people.” Nico said bluntly, and held the envelope out.

“What are you? An assassin? A monster? An assassin sent by a monster?” Wonder Boy, in all the places not covered by his ridiculous feathered mask, looked somewhere between disturbed and enraged.

“Neither. I’m a messenger, from City Hall. Specifically employed to deliver to you supers. Now take the damn package, so I can get on with my life.”

Wonder Boy eyed the envelope before lifting it from Nico’s fingers. Nico saw a glimpse of a grin when he saw that it was addressed to ‘Wonder Boy, savior of New Rome’. He ripped it open (somehow making a clean tear with just his bare hands? These supers were too much.), and slid the stack of papers from within.

“Is this… a bill?”

“Well yeah. The chimera you took down last week took half of the park with it, and you’ve downed at least three buildings since then. Someone has to pay for damages.”

“But, I was _saving_ the city!” He glanced at the actual numbers and became several shades paler. It was an unusual color on his normally golden skin. “There’s no way you can expect me to pay this much. I don’t have this.”

“Listen buddy, it’s really not my decision. I’m just the messenger. Take up your complaints with City Hall.”

“Oh gods, not now. Not with Piper leaving and-“ Wonder Boy clamped a hand abruptly over his mouth, realizing he was giving away too much, but it was too late to stop a tear from creeping down his cheek. Nico only felt a brief satisfaction at actually getting one of these super powered jocks to _cry_ for once before he started feeling a little bad for the guy.

“Hey, um. You can look here, see?” He knelt down and pointed on the sheet to the balance of numbers. “All these deductions from the total cost are from people who donated in your favor. And look, the rest of the papers are cards or stuff sent to you by the public,” he said in what he hoped was a reassuring tone. He had never been reassuring in his life, so this was a little awkward for him.

Wonder Boy sniffed and removed the hand to reveal a hesitant smile.

“I have fan mail?”

“Of course you do, you’re Mr. Perfect around here. You have a lot of admirers I think. And everyone’s been clamoring for a new hero for a while, since P- uh, _Captain Ocean_ , went on to the international council.”

“Whoa, you had Sea Lad as your city protector? That’s a tough act to follow.” Nico was caught off guard at the use of Percy’s amateur title, which he had gone to such lengths to cover up. He found himself smiling at the memory of shouting ‘It sounds like Salad!’ at an actual superhero. And Percy’s annoyed blush. The smile was quickly banished by further thoughts of that particular hero, as a stony weight fell hard in his chest.

“Yeah. And to be honest, he was a lot easier to track down than you, Flyboy. Now, you can send your payment to City Hall, please remember to use the new address as Old City Hall is still under repairs, you have the city on your side, hero!” he finished as sarcastically as possible. Wonder Boy didn’t look too amused, but at least he was aggravated instead of weirdly emotional. Nico turned to leave, but was stopped by a tug at the hem of his aviator jacket.

“Hey, what’s your name? I want to thank you for the fan mail at least.”

“Nothing to thank me for. I sure didn’t write any of it. And I don’t make a habit of giving out information to your kind. It’s to prevent you from harassing me in my personal life, get it?”

“But what if you have to give me something again? I don’t want to cause you any trouble.”

“You could help by giving me an address or a phone number or something. I’ll find you, not the other way around.” Wonder Boy looked… disappointed? It was hard to tell through the mask. He was quick to pick up an eager tone again, however.

“Okay, yeah! Do you have a pen? - Thanks, okay, here,” he said as he began scribbling on the now empty envelope. “Just text me when you have something for me, and we’ll meet up somewhere.”

Before he finished writing the number, a crash sounded from the roof access door and a loud female voice began yelling in their general direction.

“Jason, why did you ask to meet here of all places?! You know my dad will absolutely-“

She stopped with a gasp as her eyes fell upon Nico’s dark visage. So this was who Wonder Boy had been anticipating originally. She stood there in the wind, classically beautiful, despite the choppy haircut and baggy, layered clothing. Her eyes sparkled with regret and a small measure of hurt.

“Oh. Oh no, er, Wonder Boy, I seem to have the wrong rooftop. Sorry for intruding. I’ll be going now,” she said, turning to go out the way she’d come.

“Oh, uh, yes, miss, be on your way. Just a superhero conversation going on here, no need to stare,” Wonder Boy stammered as he pretended not to know the girl. That acting wasn’t going to be winning him any Oscars, to put it lightly. Nico did note that he found the stuttering mess amusing ( _cute_ was a word exiled from his vocabulary), but he couldn’t care less about who Piper was, now that he didn’t have to track the hero down any longer. In fact, he had a phone number-

He watched in despair as a gust of wind stole the envelope from Wonder Boy’s hands and dumped it into the city street below. Wonder Boy was unfortunately too busy to notice as he fumbled through some excuse for the girl to leave faster but also not leave just yet, as he apparently wanted to have conversations with both people at the same time while also keeping them separate.

With all hopes of this going as well as it seemed to be going completely dashed, Nico stood to leave.

“Never mind. I’m through here anyway.” He walked past the two of them, not bothering to say any more on his way to the fire escape, where the afternoon light tilted just enough to coat the rickety structure in shadow. They were silent up until Wonder Boy let out the beginning of a syllable, but Nico was gone before he had a chance to hear the plea for him to stay.

Heroes were too complicated.

\---

Nico got paid well enough for finding heroes that he didn’t exactly need a second job, especially when he only had himself and a tiny apartment to support, but he enjoyed his shifts at the veterinary clinic. He had a cat there, a little black and gray tabby, whom he’d named ‘Spooky’, or alternatively, ‘Spookers’, and the place allowed him to just take care of animals and not deal with all the people at the front desk.

It was while walking home from his shift that he noticed a strange presence, like someone watching. He had stopped at the store on his way to get cat treats, intended for Spooky tomorrow, and now he gripped the plastic bag and hefted it like a weapon. He kept his pace, all the while searching his peripheral vision for anything suspicious. The city had heroes for a reason, and sometimes those monsters they protected against actually had tact when they wanted to terrorize a civilian.

It was hard to get anything past Nico when he was on high alert, however, and soon enough a movement at his right, something dodging out from an alleyway, catches his eye. Quick as a whip, Nico brought his makeshift mace down on the head of the enemy, followed by a swift kick.

The following ‘oof’ didn’t sound quite like a monster.

He felt surprised but not remorseful as he realized that his foot had come into contact with red and dark blue spandex. Wonder Boy let out a small huff of pain and after he blinked his eyes really hard, they opened watery. His voice was gruff.

“Did you really have to do that? I didn’t mean to scare you or anything,” he wheezed.

“Wonder Boy, I don’t have anything for you now. Get lost.”

Nico turned to continue walking home.

“No, I wasn’t looking for another bill to pay, trust me,” he said, clear and bright again, as he jogged up to walk by Nico’s side. “It’s just that I remembered I never gave you my number. And I never got your name. I know things got pretty weird up on the rooftop and I wanted to make sure we were still on the same page.”

“Just give me a mailing address and you won’t have to worry about any of that,” Nico grumbled. He regretted even trying to make contact in the first place. Bianca would have been furious that he was choosing to talk to the heroes at all, let alone exchanging phone numbers. Maybe she had been right to follow tradition after all.

Nico was suddenly hit by a wave of nausea and melancholy, almost like homesickness. He had thought the ache of her absence would fade with time, and it had for the most part, but every now and then it came back in full force.

A deep breath and a conscious relief of the tension in his shoulders, and he could think clearly again. At that point he realized that Jason had been talking for a few minutes while Nico had been staring into space with a furrowed brow, not taking in any of what he had said. It was probably some lame excuse about why he couldn’t give his address, although he recognized that Piper girl’s name coming up a lot.

“-So she’s leaving tomorrow to be with her dad in France (France!), and I don’t think I’m upset about her leaving. I just- I mean I should be, right? But our whole thing just seems flat, like there’s nothing to it, and I don’t know if I even love her, or if I ever loved her, or what.”

How long had Nico zoned out?! This was not a conversation to be having with a stranger, Wonder Boy. How did the conversation topic even get to this? Still, the blond chattered on, and Nico was apparently in no way capable of stopping him. Finally, the hero paused and looked at him expectantly, waiting for some kind of… reaction? Input? Advice? Nico had no idea what to say.

“Shouldn’t you be fighting something or saving some damsel in distress right now?”

“No, I just did a fly over of the city before you came. No monsters. They’re getting less and less common, anyway.” Wonder Boy heaved a sigh and looked at Nico, biting his lip in uncertainty. Nico noticed a little scar across his lip, now that his attention was brought there. He found himself staring, just a little bit. Catching himself before it got creepy, he masked it with a contemplative and hopefully aggressive frown. When in doubt, intimidate.

“Uh, I’m not really feeling up for conversation. I’m going home, please don’t follow me.”

Wonder Boy muttered something at that, which Nico really should have caught if he hadn’t been too busy trying to pull his eyes away from the hero’s jawline in order to speed-walk away.

Luckily, it seemed to work, and when he glanced back (why did he glance back?), his unwanted companion stayed behind, standing still. Nico’s head snapped back to looking straight ahead. Something in the lost, crestfallen expression that filled the hero’s face had left Nico shaken. He felt a little guilty.

It was only when he was about a block away that he heard a whooshing from behind. He looked up to see the familiar blue figure flying away. It was scary how close they actually had been to his apartment. If Wonder Boy had followed him a bit further, he’d actually know where Nico lived.

A messenger sharing his _name_ with a hero was forbidden. Sharing something as personal as an address? Taboo.

He clutched the plastic bag, still held in a death grip, close to his chest. He just needed to go home. Today would be better the faster it became a memory. Just the passing seconds that he was forced to have the encounter in his short term recollection was unbearable. He looked at the long shadow in front of him. It was Nico-shaped, but the legs and torso were stretched to the next corner. Sometimes he wished he were that big, so he could just pick up the people who caused him this anxiety and flick them away.

He rounded the corner, and was engulfed in the shadow of the building. He made short work of getting to the apartment at that point. Barely any effort took him to the third building down and up to the top floor. Just when he was stepping into the amber sunlight let in by the small, clouded window outside the door reading 513, he paused. He thought he heard some kind of heavy, beating sound from somewhere outside of his own heart. Then, without warning, there was a crashing, deafening bang.  


	2. Courage under Fire

The window was gone. The wall around it, gone. The ceiling cracked and fell in chunks to the ground, letting in light from the late afternoon sky.

Standing in the hole it had created, blocking out the light with its mass, was a gryphon with claws each the size of a gladius. It had peeling skin and only about half its feathers, its lion tail thrashing its mange about. The smell was immediately overwhelming. Nico found himself alone, about four inches from the edge of the monster’s shadow.

It let out an ugly, strangled cry full of malice from its crusty beak, and fixed its black beady eyes directly onto Nico. He had nowhere to go, finding his key alone would be a struggle enough, so he didn’t make any pointless movements. The gryphon didn’t follow suit as he’d hoped. It lurched back on its haunches with tensed muscles, unfurling its massive wings just enough to fill the remaining space. Its eyes remained blank, but a low growl made its intentions clear.

It pounced forward, and Nico ducked to the side. It passed by him close enough that he could feel its feathers turn to fur against his skin. He had no time to be relieved at the narrow miss. The thing could change its momentum with incredible ease, and turned swiftly to corner its prey. Nico was against the wall. A doorknob pressed cold into his spine through his shirt. He could feel the creature’s hot breath on his face for one too many heartbeats and then – nothing.

He hadn’t realized he’d closed his eyes until he opened them. When he did, he found an empty floor. Still it was scattered with debris and feathers, but the monster was nowhere to be seen. He was too confused to be relieved, though his heart did settle from its breakneck pace now that his life had some hope of continuing. A crash outside brought him away from the wall to look out of the gaping hole that was the end of the hallway. On the roof of the neighboring building, the monster was wrestling with something, thrashing and screaming in that horrible gurgle.

Wonder Boy (of course) flew out from underneath with ease, not appearing to be injured in any way. Nico wasn’t sure why that alleviated the tension in his chest. The hero, hovering above, blasted the thing with a bright arc of electricity shot directly from the palm of his hands. It crackled through the air and landed with a resounding, booming thunder. The gryphon fell and let out a final shriek before exploding into golden dust. And that was it. Feathers and dust littered the rooftop. Nico picked his way through the rubble that used to be wall and window, and took the wide step up past all of it to stand in the fading sunlight.

Wonder Boy landed in front of him almost the instant he stepped into the open air. He looked concerned behind the mask. His hands reached out.

“Are you alright?” His hands landed on Nico’s shoulders and the hero glanced him over, eyes searching Nico’s body for injuries, Nico supposed. Nico immediately stiffened and threw him off, taking a step away to reestablish his space. He felt a slosh of panic below his ribs.

“Hey, hey I was only trying to help. Sorry.” A blush formed below the rim of the mask, though he was obviously still concerned about Nico’s well-being.

“Are you hurt anywhere?” he asked again, hands still hovering in the space between them, clearly wanting to provide assistance.

“No,” came his immediate answer. “I’m fine. It wasn’t here long. Actually, it was here for a suspiciously short time.”

“What could you mean by that?”

“Well, as far as I remember, a couple minutes ago you were flying off in _that_ direction,” Nico pointed. “Which would make it awfully hard for you to be here with such immediate attention, I think.”

“That- I don’t- uh, I’ve got good hearing?”

“I told you not to follow me home. I said please and everything. Do you know how rare it is for me to say please to anyone?”

“Come on, I wasn’t, I mean, not technically, I wasn’t following you. It was more like a fly-over that was just slightly biased, location-wise.”

“I can’t believe you.”

“It’s just, I’m sorry for loading all that onto you earlier, I really didn’t mean to get into all that stuff with Piper. I meant to talk to you about what you did the other day,” Wonder Boy said. He gained confidence in his voice even as his face got progressively redder.

Nico’s eyes widened. He jumped onto the hero, bringing them both to the ground, just as a scorpion tail shot into the space Wonder Boy’s head would have otherwise occupied.

“What are you do – oh!” the hero exclaimed as he realized the situation. A creature with a lion’s body and leathery bat wings was rounding on them again. It had a human face in form, but it didn’t quite fit. It was stretched and slightly disproportionate. When it snarled at them, rows and rows of pointed shark teeth glinted inside the lipless mouth.

Wonder Boy rolled into position and fired another lightning bolt at it, but it only served to deter the beast without making contact. The manticore circled back, ready to strike again. The hero, meanwhile, looked faded and worn. The attack had taken more of a toll on him than the manticore.

Nico jumped from crouching to standing, trying to draw its attention away from Jason (Jason? Was that even his name? He’d only heard it fleetingly, from that girl. It would be a shame if he died and he couldn’t remember his name right). The manticore drew its mouth into a snarl again, and Nico briefly wondered if it could speak. A speaking creature might find reason.

Instead, it lunged, lion claws first, at Nico. He ducked, rolling to the side. It lunged again, and he dodged under it this time. He was getting tired. The manticore was not.

Somehow, he accidently brought it closer to Jason again in the next few near-misses. The hero sent a noticeably weaker bolt at the thing, but even that much seemed to take up all of his remaining energy. The manticore was unfazed. It lashed out with its tail at Jason’s crumpled form, and Nico felt panic in its rawest form swarm inside of himself. There was a sudden pain in his head, and his everything in the world seemed to go sideways for a moment. He heard a great cracking (though his eyes were closed again), and felt a cold chill sweep through his body. It got darker as the shadows pooled around them.

Nico was directly next to Jason again, despite being yards away only seconds ago. The manticore was gone, and in its place was an abyss in the rooftop before them. Nico looked to Wonder Boy, who was staring at the void with a look of astonishment.

“I _knew it_ ,” he murmured to himself. Now it was Nico’s turn to be surprised. He had no _idea_ what had just happened. Only that he had done it somehow, and that he’d never seen or heard of anything like this before. He glanced at the shadows, which were still retreating into the usual twilight around them. When he turned back to Wonder Boy for answers, the blond had already passed out.

A quick surveillance of the area deemed it clear of any more monsters, so Nico crept over to the crevice he’d created. It was deep. While only about ten feet across on the surface, the hole went down through the entire building and further into the earth. He guessed the manticore had either died from the fall or been swallowed into the ground entirely. Luckily this building was vacant, or there’d be massive problems with this situation, if it already weren’t bad enough.  

He gave the abyss one last glance before returning to the injured hero’s side.

“Wonder Boy. Jason? Wake up,” he tried, with no success. He really considered leaving him out here on the roof. It wasn’t as if it was Nico’s problem that the monsters had attacked or that Wonder Boy had decided to save him or that Wonder Boy had passed out in trying to save him. He didn’t ask for any of this.

He walked to the blown out wall leading to his own building and stood teetering on the rubble between cement and carpet. He stepped down to the inside of the building.

He was in for maybe a second before the sudden sound of a siren brought him bolting back out again, for fear that something else was attacking. Jason! …The hero was exactly where Nico had left him, crumpled in a pile. It was too dangerous to just leave him out here, no matter how little Nico desired to further his involvement in this odd relationship.

He dragged Wonder Boy up, pulling from under his armpits. He was so much heavier than he looked. It must’ve been from all that muscle that Nico totally _hadn’t_ noticed up until just this moment. He made it to his own door inside the building and let the hero slump back to the ground as he reached for his keys. The designated pocket for keys in his aviator jacket, however, was devastatingly empty. Reaching in further, his fingers slipped through straight to the cold air. Somewhere in the struggle, one of the creatures had managed to tear through the material of his favorite item of clothing.

He scowled and cursed their dusty remains. Whatever exploding into dust felt like, it was too good a fate for such a terrible crime. He’d never be able to fix it completely.

He was so caught up in the damage done he’d almost forgotten about the missing apartment key. It was too dark now to search for it on the scene of the battle, and he didn’t exactly want to talk to the landlady with an unconscious teenager in tow. Then again, it might be better to just go inform her of the damages and what had happened, and maybe she’d call an ambulance for Wonder Boy.

Not that the hospital would know what to do with him, whereas Nico had ambrosia in his medicine cabinet and a lot of experience dealing with power exhaustion. He looked to Wonder Boy for guidance. Unfortunately, that blew the last hole in his plan.

The mask had fallen off, somewhere out on the roof. He couldn’t take him to the landlady now that there was no chance of concealing his identity, or the hospital for the same reason. It would be easier to just kill him now and save his family the ambulance bill. More than a few heroes had had their lives ruined in the past thanks to losing their secret, and he wouldn't do something like that to anyone, no matter how stalkerish they came off.

Identity issues aside, the exodus of the mask caused other problems, such as the fact that his full face was moderately to severely good-looking, and that these stupidly well-proportioned features were scrunched up in pain. Nico was convinced these were both strategical tactics being employed against him to break his will and take the hero in. It was working.

He scanned the broken glass and cement chunks for anything key-shaped, hoping that they fell inside the building and its fluorescent lighting.

…There! He guessed it had happened when the gryphon had first lunged at him, mercifully. He really wasn’t looking forward to breaking into his own apartment.

He shook the cement dust out and slid the 513 key to the 513 keyhole, about to enter when a gasp sounded from behind. He turned, heart already racing again as if it hadn’t been doing that enough today, to see one of his neighbors peeking out from inside her apartment down the hall.

“I-is it gone? Are you boys alright?”

“Um, yeah, it’s gone, Mrs. Fletcher. I’ll report the wall, so you can go back inside.”

“Who is that young man? He’s wearing a costume…”

“Mrs. Fletcher, you should really go back inside. We’ll be fine, like I said.”

“Oh, alright, I suppose I should be used to you and your sist – ah, you kids, getting up to things like this,” she tried to hastily recover. Nico only felt a mild exasperation at the mistake. Reminders like that didn’t bother him nearly as much as just… noticing she was gone. Certain smells, memories, passing by her bedroom door, were all so much worse than Mrs. Fletcher slipping up.

“I’ve got it under control, but thanks for worrying about us. Goodnight,” Nico said, already popping his door open and placing his keys and jacket inside.

“Alright, well, goodnight,” she sighed, and disappeared behind door 508.

Nico breathed out, finally relaxing after the tenth close-call of the night. Mrs. Fletcher had lived down the hall for as long as he could remember, and he was pretty sure he could trust her to not say anything. After all, she’d seen him and Bianca dragging ‘their friend Perry’ in varying physical conditions on more than a few occasions over the years, and never said a word about it other than her genuine, albeit easily swayed, concerns.

He reached around to flick the light switch on the inside wall and opened the door as wide as it could go. He stood then for a second, mentally preparing for the next task. Without his jacket, the cool air of the drafty building fell against his exposed arms. He didn’t want to damage it further while trying to move Wonder Boy inside, though, so his too-big t-shirt would have to do.

The hero, meanwhile, had started groaning in his sleep and clutching at his side. Alright, no time for hesitations, or for giving in to the feeling that this was very wrong and wouldn’t end well.

As he dragged the guy inside by his armpits, he couldn’t help but spiral, anyway. Wasn’t this exactly the kind of behavior he’d sworn off forever? Wasn’t this exactly the sort of thing that led to all that misery of the past? If he could consult the version of himself still dressed in funeral black, wouldn’t that Nico berate him for giving in to old habits so easily?

Of course, these doubts were frozen half-formed by the obvious pain being suffered by someone who appeared to just be a genuinely nice guy. All his worrying wouldn’t help right now.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thanks for reading! if the timing of this update says anything, it's that i'm very easy to control with comments.


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